Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
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Nigerian government unleashes massive repression after #EndHunger protests

Mass arrests in Nigeria target those involved in #EndHunger protests.

Protesters try to de-arrest someone from a police van outside Thales in Glasgow.

The shift in Glasgow and how we fight back

What to make of new violence against the Palestine solidarity movement?

Image is a close-up of a crowd holding a variety of union flags including PCS and RMT, with placards saying "Protect our right to strike" and "Defend the Right to Strike". The people in the shot apear diverse in age, gender and race. In the centre of the shot, a person in a yellow shirt with the word 'RESIST' on it raises their left fist.

‘Lack and longing’: an interview with Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever

Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever answer questions about race, nation, working class struggle and the breakdown of Britain’s democratic settlement.

Boris Liar Johnson

An account of Boris’s ungainly exit from British politics.

Scientists hold up banner

Climate scientists defend colleagues victimised for activism

Science is often linked to corporates and the state – but scientists are organising.

Empty seats on a British train carriage

The Great British fob off 

The recent announcement of a new public sector body called ‘Great British Railways’ to co-ordinate all rail services has been hailed by many as a victory, but these plans in fact set the stage for increases in fares and job cuts for rail workers. 

Relatives carry a woman who fainted after seeing the body of her husband at a hospital in Ahmedabad, India

Turning a profit from death: Modi’s pandemic response in neoliberal India

The recent upsurge of Covid across India has laid bare the Indian state’s utter failure to protect its population.

Riot police surround a chalet during the Dale Farm eviction in 2011.

How the Police Bill targets Gypsies, Roma and Travellers

The Police Bill will further criminalise GRT people. Charlotte Powell interviews Luke Smith from GRTSocialists.

Banner reads 'kill the bill'

The Police Bill, lockdown and the right to protest

Barrister David Renton explores why the government is so determined to suppress protest, the Police Bill, and the impact of the Covid Regulations on protest rights.

‘When you have a hammer’: state repression and the pandemic

Facing a fraying of its ideological hegemony, the government increasingly relies on state repression. But this intensified violence could yet backfire.

What’s left of Lenin?

150 years after the birth of V.I. Lenin, Leninism offers us urgent and fundamental lessons about what it means to practise politics in capitalist society.

A field, with a caravan camp in the distance on the left side, in front of hills

Whose land? Resisting the Tories’ anti-traveller policy plans

Hanna Gál writes on why the Tories’ plan to increase police powers against illegal encampments must be resisted.

Kick Boris Out

The long Conservative decline

Labour still has a long way to go to win this election. But the Tory crisis won’t go away either, regardless of who wins on 12 December, argues Duncan Thomas.

‘Dear Sisters of the Earth’: Peterloo bicentenary

Women were a particular target of the violence at Peterloo on 16 August 1819. We publish an extract from an address by the Manchester Female Reform Society delivered shortly before the massacre.

Marching lines of police stretching into the distance near parliament

200 years after Peterloo, do we face a new wave of repression?

As we approach the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, Ian Allinson argues that the right are pressing Boris Johnson to introduce a new wave of repression.

Tories in crisis: what comes next? Neil Davidson

Video: Tories in crisis – what comes next?

Watch Marxist historian and author Neil Davidson discuss the establishment’s triple crisis of strategy, party and state – and its potential outcomes.

revolutionary reflections | Value, force, many states and other problems: part 3

In the third and final part of his essay on violence and capitalist social relations, Colin Barker insists that capitalist states cannot be theorised without recognising their multiplicity.

revolutionary reflections | Value, force, many states and other problems: part 2

In the second part of his essay on how violence and coercion are written into the core of capitalist social relations, Colin Barker explores how states modify the law of value.

revolutionary reflections | Value, force, many states and other problems: part 1

The first part of Colin Barker’s essay looking at how violence and coercion are written into the core of capitalist social relations

revolutionary reflections | Notes on Capital and the State: part 1

The relationship between the state and capital is a major problem in Marxist theory. In the first of a three part series Colin Barker investigates how Marxists have addressed this question.

Pro choice demonstrators with placard showing woman in handmaid dress

The Handmaid’s Tale: hope is evident amidst repression

Angela Stapleford argues that the recent adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale holds up a mirror to the worst possibilities within our own world, but also shows the possibility of resistance.

Arguments for revolution

Jack Farmer argues that we need revolutionary ideas more than ever now that Jeremy Corbyn is Labour leader  The unthinkable has become real: a socialist is leader of the Labour Party. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Labour’s history is littered with right-wing leaders who have betrayed the hopes of those who voted for them. As I […]

Socialism from below

Dan Swain discusses the contested ambitions and leaderships within our movements. This article was originally published in the Summer 2015 issue of the rs21 magazine.  Throughout the history of socialist movements and ideas, the fundamental divide is between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below So argues Hal Draper’s 1966 pamphlet The Two Souls of Socialism.  In it, he […]

ACAB from Warwick to NYC

Whether it’s killing black people in America or London, or attacking peaceful student protesters at Warwick University with CS spray, cops worldwide are racist and violent. Rob Owen looks at why that is. You have the emergence in human society Of this thing that’s called the State What is the State? The State is this organized […]

The elephant is political

“Anti-politics” has become a phrase widely used to describe the state of politics today. Here, Colin Barker examines what ‘politics’ meant for Marx and what it means for revolutionaries today.

The changing face of imperialism

Ukraine and Syria have put imperialism back at the top of the political agenda. Rob Owen traces the theory of imperialism and charts the trajectory of US imperialism in recent years.